h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Good article.

Can anyone see this working out? Are we not too ingrained in kilobytes, megabytes etc?

That's the thing - we're just about OK for now, but the difference increases with the advance of technology.

But does that difference matter? Surely the KB, MB, TBs are only used for comparison; so as long as we go with like for like it doesn't.

I think the change over could be made if new technology came into effect. For example, there's always confusion about broadband speeds being MBytes or Mbits. No-one really understands what they mean, so if the first broadband had been released with the new abbreviations everybody would have accepted them.

I thought a baud was an AUDio Bit, in that it was one binary bit of data transmitted audibly over a phone line via an old cradle style modem. I am sure I heard that on some educational television show in the mid eighties.

Although... my quick web etymology sampling seems unanimously in favour of Baudot, so cheers to him.

It would need to be something fundamental and universal - I can't see competitive commercial forces adopting it en masse to describe existing technologies.



Thanks - I hadn't heard that before. h5ringer wrote an interesting piece on baud rates in the Peer Review thread - see F8743471?thread=4801844

Icy